Sun Background With Inkscape - An Illustration Tutorial

In this tutorial we will learn how to create an image that resembles sun rays. These kinds of images are commonly used as backgrounds, as they draw attention towards a certain object in the foreground. You can see the finished product above, with the sun as background and a pooch as foreground.

Creating the Triangle Slices

The sun slices are made up of triangles, unfortunately there is no triangle tool in Inkscape and we will have to make our own out of rectangles. We will then duplicate and rotate the triangles around a central point to create the sun.

First, create a rectangle using the rectangle tool on the left toolbar. You can shift it sideways and tweak it lengthwise so that the top-left edge is roughly in between the two bottom edges. We will next remove the top right edge, and will create a triangle.

Creating a Triangle Slice

There is no easy way to chop off the top right corner of the rectangle, so let's convert the rectangle into a path and then delete the node that is the top right corner. The top left and bottom right corners will automatically be linked by a new segment then.

Turn the rectangle into a path by going to Path -> Object to Path.

Use the "Edit path" tool (F2) to select the top right node (the one highlighted in red in the picture). Press the Delete key to remove it - the shape instantly turns into a triangle.

Grab the triangle's top node and center it horizontally between the base nodes. You might like to use the grid to help with alignment - to make the grid visible go to View -> Grid. The next step is to set the rotation point to be the tip of the triangle. This point will be the centre of the sun, and all triangles will be rotated around it. If you do not set it to be at the very tip of the triangle, then the sun effect will not work.
Double click on the triangle with the Select tool (F1), a cross will appear in the middle of the triangle (shown in red below).

Click and hold the cross - this is the centre point - move it upwards toward the tip. Notice the new location of the centre point, at the top of the triangle in the picture below.